8/2     What do you guys think about http://www.wtcmovie.com ?
        \_ I don't think much either way, but it's clear we're still in what
           I'd call "The Rambo Years" -- a very glorified version of historical
           events. I don't think it's outright propaganda, I think it's actually
           a fairly collective view the US has on 9/11. Make this movie in 10 or
           20 years and it will be entirely different. I can't wait for the FMJ
           kind of take on it. --michener
           I'd call "The Rambo Years" -- a very glorified version of
           historical events. I don't think it's outright propaganda, I think
           it's actually a fairly collective view the US has on 9/11. Make
           this movie in 10 or 20 years and it will be entirely different. I
           can't wait for the FMJ kind of take on it. --michener
           [formatd was here]
           \_ who/what is FMJ ?
              \_ Full Metal Jacket?
        \_ I prefer http://www.tawnyroberts.com  -proud American

8/2     So what patches do I need in order to prevent the system-wide
        web site defacement thing?
        \_ 1, 3, and 17
        \_ All of them.  -tom
        \_ ask a stupid question...
        \_ "How do I use emacs?"
        \_ 62.974 and 17.2  -proud American
        \_ Cabbage patch.

8/2     Hey shac, do you still use nightmarehost, I mean http://dreamhost.com?
        Do you still recommend it after its complete debacle and hundreds
        of pissed off users in the past month or so? I'm a current
        nightmarehost user and I'm trying to find a new service, DESPERATELY.

8/2     Ann Coulter vs. Adolf Hitler, can you tell the difference?
        http://www.giveupblog.com/hitlercoulterquiz.html
        \_ This is not a fair comparison.
        \_ I got 11 right.
        \_ As much as I dislike Ann Coulter, this is pretty dumb.
        \_ 10 right it was challenging
        \_ Yeah, I did Ann, but not Adolf. -proud American
        \- i got 13 of them ... it's really a matter of picking out the
           hitler quotes ... he's probably a better writer :-).
           speaking of "it sounds better in the original german" ...
           http://www.cafepress.com/ipa_politics.14449333

8/2     I'm in charge of setting up the software infrastructure at a
        small company and would like advice/pointers on which LINUX
        distro is best for small, internally used compute/database servers.
        I want something which is stable, easy to maintain/upgrade, and has
        commercial support available for purchase. I've been happy with
        Debian's ease of maintenance/upgrade/install via apt/synaptic, but
        I've heard good things about Ubuntu and Fedora. Thanks for the advice.
        \_ I use Centos. Ubuntu is a desktop OS and fedora is too bleeding
           edge for a server.
           \_ Thanks. Any thoughts on pros/cons of Debian?
        \_ If you're interested in purchasing commercial support, you
           might as well use RedHat.  In no case should you use Fedora
           in production.  Centos is fine, but is more or less equivalent
           to RedHat without support.  -tom
<<<<<<< Other Changes Below
           \_ Thanks. Can you buy support for Centos from RedHat or will they
              refuse unless you buy the official RHEL?

=======
        \_ apt-get uber Alles! That said, what the rest of everyone is saying is
           true. RedHat or CentOS are good if you're of the .rpm persuasion, and
           if you want the closest Linux to a BSD mentality, try Slackware (seeing
           as this is an internal site we're talking about). Under no circumstances
           should anyone touch Gentoo (even for a desktop).
>>>>>>> Your Changes Above
        \_ apt-get uber Alles! That said, what the rest of everyone is saying
           is true. RedHat or CentOS are good if you're of the .rpm
           persuasion, and if you want the closest Linux to a BSD mentality,
           try Slackware (seeing as this is an internal site we're talking
           about). Under no circumstances should anyone touch Gentoo (even for
           a desktop).  [formatd was here]
        \_ "Commercial support" is a reasonably useless phrase.  For Redhat
           it mostly means you pay them a fairly large chunk of money to get
           access to their "up to date" patch system.  To be fair it is a
           pretty decent system but it requires no less clue and often more
           clue than other systems to get setup well.  What exactly does your
           management believe they're getting for their "commercial support"?
           As Tom said you are limited to Redhat if "cs" is a requirement.  If
           management isn't that stupid then choose whatever you and the rest
           of the technical staff are most familiar with.  What you know best
           is what you'll run best.  It's common sense.  Under the hood the
           distros are all the same.  It's the same kernel, the same network
           stack, the same filesystems, etc.  The distro differences are
           meaningless for common use.
           \_ Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. The reason I'm
              asking about "commercial support" is that management gave me
              a free hand to setup the tech/software end the way I thought best
              and I want to be able to get quick help with any problems.
              I've used linux for over 8 years and it's definetly better for
              our plans than Windows. But if we went with Windows and had
              problems, they wouldn't question my judgement since everyone
              uses Windows. If problems come up with linux, I want to get them
              fixed quick so they don't wonder whether it was the right choice.
              \_ The safest choice is definitely paying for RHEL.  Not only
                 is there a company backing it, it's also the reference
                 standard for Linux, so third-party applications will
                 definitely work with it.  -tom
              \_ It sounds like you want RH.  But don't just fill out the
                 forms and start installing.  See what they'll charge to
                 send one of their in house consultants over for a day to
                 talk to your about your needs and help you design the right
                 thing.  This will get you off on the right foot and give
                 you leverage with them later if something goes wrong. "But
                 this stuff was setup by your guy!!!" breaks down a lot of
                 support barriers when you need help.
        \_ So, we use RedHat at my work, and we seem to at least get the
           ability to hassle them when something goes seriously wrong.
           Support does not seem to be just limited to patches, although
           we are a really big user and may have a non-standard contract.
           Also, RedHat does not seem to be the same as all other distros
           under the hood.  Redhat seems to have added non-standard
           extensions.  About 2 years ago on RedHat Enterprise 3 they
           tweaked the scheduler in some way to "improve database
           performance."  Unfortunatly, it also killed interactive and
           build performance.  (What we use it for.)  It didn't seem to be
           a problem in Linux at large, just RedHat EL3.
           \_ Broken to a degree that most people would notice or you had to
              profile and time it to see the difference on a large build?
                --just curious
              \_ WE certainly noticed.  Our build times tripled.  They
                 went from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours.  And the system wasn't
                 very useable when building either.  I'm not even really
                 sure how this was possible, the both CPUs were still
                 mostly idle.  It was pretty much awful.
        \_ We use SuSE. Great full support, site license didn't cost huge
           amounts of dough, and they actually do QA before pushing distros
           out, unlike RedHate.
           \_ I second SuSE. don't buy redhat, they should not be rewarded
              for their fedora BS.
        \_ I use Microsoft Windows 3.1. -proud American

8/2     How come web sites that praise http://dreamhost.com don't accept
        additional reviews anymore?  I'd like to add negative feedbacks to
        counter the positive feedbacks but unable to do so. What's up?
        Here are some examples:
        http://www.webhostingratings.com (blank interface to add review)
        http://www.brunescafe.com/content/view/16/2 (can't enter info)
        There are two others that I've waited 3 days for the approval to
        go through, even though their web sites say: "Thank you for voicing
        your opinion about DreamHost, Joe.  Your opinion will help other
        Webmasters in their search for the right Web host.  All reviews are
        manually approved, in order to remove spam.  Reviews are typically
        approved once per day." What the hell is going on?
        \_ hi im bitter
        \_ The jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.  Are
           you a jew? -proud American
        \_ Stop advertising porn sites. -proud New Englander

8/2     Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab employee arrested on child porn
        charges.
        http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_4120530
        The thing I think is iteresting here is that the Lab has gone into
        damage control mode.  (Press releases that say things like, "We
        are fully cooperating with the police," etc.)  Do you really need
        damage control in a case like this?
        \_ I don't know what grant or funding politics are like for
           that sort of organization, but I assume there is quite a bit
           of nastiness that goes on when competing for govt. money.  It
           would be pretty easy to insinuate shit like "well, their people
           are just surfing for kiddy porn on taxpayer dough" to the press.
           I've seen worse.  -John
           \- Livermore is an employer with +10k employee ... dont you think
              this is just a matter of statistics? It's not like they were
              running a massive bittorrent p0rn server. Resources spent
              playing Big Brother costs real money, and imposes real costs
              [should the computer security people run "find *.jpg"
              in people homedirs and have somebody spend 10hrs a week
              looking these over?]
              \_ You're preaching to the saved.  Pr0n at the workplace, if
                 you consider it a problem, is not something you can solve
                 technically, and I argue this constantly (it's a management
                 issue.)  Unfortunately, there's a combination of factors,
                 such as many managers not wanting to take ownership of
                 talking to employees whose work is being affected by non-
                 work stuff, over-zealous HR people, legal guys worried about
                 harassment suits and senir management who see this sort of
                 thing in a very binary manner, that often results in demands
                 for excessive "pre-emptive" measures.  But in this case I
                 was just commenting on the logic behind the "damage control"
                 that op asked about--I don't know the politics that surround
                 LLNL, and was assuming that this was just pre-emptive to
                 avoid the case being misused by someone overly zealous or
                 with a political agenda.  -John
              \_ It's odder than that, all the porn was at home, none
                 was at work.  So to my mind, LLNL has absolutely nothing
                 to do with this.  Never the less, I think John has a
                 point about politics. (Digression from above: LLNL DOES
                 put a lot of man power into watching out for porn at
                 work.) -op
                 \- i didnt look at the details carefully, but if what you say
                    is true, this is a good example of "if the press wants to
                    do a hatchet job on you, no matter what steps you take,
                    thay can allways paint it as unreasonable" [save the
                    thay can always paint it as unreasonable" [save the
                    children, your tax dollars at work etc]. which isnt to say
                    "do nothing" but dont let "the standard of care" be "what
                    will satisfy a reporter with a small brain". [at various
                    times i have been involved in "appropriate use" compliance
                    issues and there is a very strong correlation with the
                    overall resonableness and cleverness of people working in
                    this area and their distate for being involved ... the one
                    person who was enthusiastic about this was a lying, incom-
                    petent sack of shit, who did a lot of underhanded political
                    things here, had no respect of anybody reasonable and some
                    what creepily made it part of his job to visit some of
                    the tagged WEEB site to make sure they were perverted/
                    pornish.]

        \_ Wen Ho Lee got reamed for far less. -proud American
           \_ To be fair, leaving around diskettes of nuclear secrets
              is a lot worse than child porn.
              \_ And your basis for saying he did is...?
                \_ I thought he pled guilty to carelessly copying
                   classified nuclear crap to data cassettes and leaving
                   it in unclassified areas, probably for a job interview?
                   I don't think he was out there selling our secrets
                   to the Chinese, he was just really careless.  Feel
                   free to prove me wrong.
                   \_ No, he didn't plead guilty to that.
                   \_ he was being single out because he is Chinese.
                      There are plenty of people in the lab do exactly the
                      same thing or worse but they end up in... hmm...
                      \_ I bet they don't anymore!
                      lecture hall of MIT instead of solidary comfinment
                      for 23 hours a day, shackled from waist down, for
                      9 month.  May be you should really work for Christopher
                      Cox (author of "The Cox Report", now Chairman of SEC).
                      \_ and dude I don't know Chinese but I KNOW your
                         English is better than this, what is your problem?

8/2     Just curious, does anyone here play the RPG Paranoia?
        \_ Who wants to know!??
        \_ http://www.cruisegazing.com/RPG_Motivational/clearance.jpg
           \_ Ha, I've MET this guy!
           \_ Ha, I have a picture of this guy!
              http://www.cruisegazing.com/RPG_Motivational/conventions.jpg
              \_ I already have the email address "optimus prime" so I'm
                 perfectly positioned...
        \_ Geek alert. -proud American
        \_ Yes.

08/05/1945      I predict Hiroshima will be toast tomorrow   -motd guru

8/2     It's clear that GWB doesn't believe in global warming, but does he
        believe in evolution? Are there indications that he supports the
        Intelligent Design/Creationism theory?

8/2     Every single contributor to Green Party Senate candidate is a
        conservative - except for the candidate himself
        http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001256.php
        \_ Ilya, is that you?
                \_ Yes. -proud American

8/2     Why is FoxNews so obsessed about Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart?
        Everytime I go to their site, articles of Jacko and Martha are in
        proximity of their headline news. It's almost as if news about Jacko
        is as important as our glorious war in Iraq.
        \_ Because everyone loves a good freak show. -Jerry Springer

8/3     The conservatives are fighting back! All this, plus the WTC
        Movie + 911 Movie + secret Rove programs point to the complete
        Republican victory in November          -motd political guru
        http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/haditha.suit
        \_ Is he gonna sue the Pentagon and the AP as well?
           http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060802/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/haditha_investigation_6
        \_ We cannot be stopped.  Seig heil!  -proud American

8/2     What are the disk quota for my home dir and my mail spool?  Thx.
        \_ quota -v will tell you better than motd can.
           \_ It only displays a quota for /dev/sdbl.  Does that mean there is
              no limit for my home dir?
        \_ 49.37 MB -proud American
                \_ Correct.

8/2     Further hygiene poll.  If you're a desk jockey (programmer, whatever)
        who doesn't work out or even walk fast most days, do you shower:
        At least once a day: ....
        A few days a week: ..
        Once a week: .
        Less:

8/2     Hygiene poll:
                   Deodorant: ....
             Anti-perspirant: ..
   I geek, therefore I stink:
               I don't sweat: ..

8/2     So my deal with SBC is up in a few weeks and I'm thinking of
        switching over to Speakeasy DSL, as it costs the same as what I'm
        paying now, gives me twice the bandwidth, and has no landline
        (which I rarely use on SBC). Any previous experiences with
        Speakeasy to speak to their character? --michener
        \_ Speakeasy's great. I've had DSL with them for over 6 years
           and don't have any complaints.
        \_ No. -proud American
           \_ Speakeasy had been great.  Over the last two years, they've
              grown more and more incompetent, and they can't seem to be
              able to swing decent service contracts with their telco
              pairings.  The last time I tried to get an install, I ended
              up missing 3 days of work because they couldn't give me the
              right DATE for the installer.  Not the wrong time, the wrong
              DATE!
              \_ I've had good service from Speakeasy itself, but I've had
                 similar problems with their LEC pairings. When I moved,
                 Covad forgot to turn off my old tap, so I was getting billed
                 twice; when I complained to Speakeasy, Covad shut off my new
                 line and left the old one in place. I was down for a couple
                 of weeks. Speakeasy did all they could, though, including
                 giving me a free month's service. The nice thing about them
                 is that I can call and say "your DNS servers are broken" and
                 have the person I'm talking to actually know what I'm saying,
                 instead of asking me to reboot my modem a la SBC. -gm
        \_ Go with AOL.  They are the best.  -proud Midwesterner

8/2     Poll. Mel Gibson is:
        truly sorry: ..
        truly anti-semetic: ..
        sorry he got caught: ...

8/3     http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14153714
        Heat burns the Bush half of the country. Maybe they'll finally
        stop driving SUVs and live in wasteful suburbia. Or not.
        \_ maybe they'll just spend more energey on more powerful air
           conditioning.
        \_ people is not going to relate their lavish (energy wise) life
           style with global warming... not those who lives in Bush
           Country.
        \_ I love my big red SUV with the air conditioning on at full
           blast at all times. -proud American
           \_ Red?  Fucking commie.
        \_ I love my SUV. -proud Southerner

8/2     Does anybody have a sample of a reliable and robust /tmp cleaner
        which can be run out of cron? I am not sure what is a good way to
        make sure things that need to be persistent like ssh-agent "files"
        dont get deleted ... obviously I can specifically tailor it for
        "known knowns", but I want something conservative but also reasonable.
        \_ reboot?
        \- i'm thinking if the idea is to save space, rather than remove
           clutter, can add a switch to remove say +1mb files. But not sure
           of a good idea for the clutter problem ... maybe not descend to
           subdirs for some rules.
                \_ Yes.  -proud American

8/2     We're hiring software engineers. Great place to work, interesting
        projects, and so forth. See /csua/pub/jobs/FortifySoftware or email
        me for details. -gm
        \_ I am so in.  So in. -proud American